July was the hottest month
ever in the continental U.S., and the past twelve months have been hotter than
any such period on record. Half of all counties in the country have been declared disaster areas, mainly due to
drought. We’ve rounded up some of the best
journalism on the effects of rising temperatures. Got others you’re burning to
share? Add them in the comments.

Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas, New York Times,
August 2012Under a U.N. carbon
credit program, manufacturers can get credits for reducing emission of greenhouse
gases. But air-conditioner and refrigerator manufacturers realized they could
profit from a waste gas produced while making coolant, and they started making
and destroying more of it to earn credits. The result: more production
of the original coolant, which also contributes to global warming and damages
the ozone layer.

In Drought-Stricken Midwest, It's Fodder Vs. Fuel, NPR, July 2012A U.S. law requires gas companies to
buy a certain amount of ethanol, which is made from corn. That means ethanol
factories are buying up the crop. Farmers who need corn for livestock, and who
are already struggling with drought, say the system isn't fair.

Wildfire: Red slurry's toxic dark side,Denver Post, June
2012Hundreds of thousands of gallons of
"red slurry" were dropped on wildfires raging in Colorado. The
chemical mixture is effective at firefighting, but it’s also full of toxins,
including ammonia and nitrates, which threaten the water supply and wildlife.
For more background on the Colorado fires, read I-News Network’s account on how
more people are moving into the state’s high-risk “red
zones”, even as the frequency of fires
has increased over the past decade.

Oysters in deep trouble: Is Pacific Ocean’s chemistry
killing sea life?, The Seattle
Times, April 2012Since 2005, millions of Pacific oysters
in a Washington estuary
have failed to reproduce and the oyster
larvae have been dying. Though region-specific causes contributed to the decline,
some scientists believe that greenhouse gases are leading to increased
corrosive seawater sooner than expected.

The Great Oasis, The New Yorker, December 2011About a third of the earth is covered
in desert, a percentage that increases each year thanks in part to climate
change and unsustainable farming. The New Yorker’s Burkhard Bilger examines the
science and politics involved in various countries’ efforts to stop
desertification, from China and Israel to Oman and Nigeria.

Our Dying Forests, The Salt Lake Tribune, September 2011This multi-part series centers on the
decline of the once-lush forestation in the Rocky Mountain West, where warmer
winters and longer growing seasons have sparked an explosion of native beetle
species that have destroyed 40 million acres of moisture-starved spruce, firs
and aspen.

Extreme Heat Blanches Coral, and Threat is Seen, The New York Times, September 2010In 2010 many of the world’s coral reefs
turned white in reaction to too-warm waters. Coral bleaching and die-offs often
occur in years when El Niño or other
unusual weather patterns contribute to hot ocean temperatures, but scientists
say that global warming is also playing a factor in what they call “global
bleachings.”

Losing
Louisiana, The Times-Picayune,
December 2008Rising sea levels pose a particular
problem for Louisiana’s fragile coastline, where the land is sinking and
protective wetlands have been ravaged by development and hurricanes. North
Carolina’s shore is also seeing the impact of rising seas, as the Charlotte
Observer covered in a recent series on coastal erosion.

(Apologies if this goes through twice. If someone on the ProPublica side sees it again and can delete this copy, it’d be appreciated.)

Since it’s the topic, there’s a couple of reasons I don’t buy the Artificial Global Warming theory. I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind, here, but I can’t let something like this slip by without at least posting my own dissent.

1. The committee reports that summarize the climate data consistently show that we do NOT understand the effect of carbon dioxide well, even while asserting it’s the strongest cause of warming, and also assumes that all effects must be runaway exponential growth.

2. There have been many calls to silence any scientist who disagrees with the “consensus.” Truth doesn’t need do suppress falsehood, but falsehood often seeks to suppress the truth.

3. The concept is too reminiscent of the old-world religions, where our sins have angered the gods and only by giving up our lives (or our livelihoods) to enrich the leaders can we redeem ourselves.

4. The carbon credit exchange was architected by Ken Lay of Enron fame, which sounds as safe as Jeffrey Dahmer opening a restaurant.

5. While our government asks us to cut back here, there, and everywhere, they still tool around in motorcades and fly hundreds people around the country every week. Nobody has shifted the Capitol building to solar power, for example.

6. If literally anybody with power were serious about carbon dioxide, there is a cutting-edge technology that can be deployed in nearly any empty space to solve it. It not only absorbs carbon dioxide, but also blocks sunlight from the local area. If that weren’t enough, it can also produce breatheable oxygen and even food. To top it off, this technology requires little maintenance and even performs better as heat and carbon dioxide increase. However, no government or corporate plan to stop global warming has involved loading up empty lots with…plants. I’ve heard many people propose inducing a nuclear winter, which could kill billions of people. I’ve never heard anybody propose planting a damned tree.

I won’t even get into the evidence that Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are also warming, or ClimateGate, or…

It’s a shame, too. I think clean power, better transportation, reduced consumption, and an improved environment for us to live in would be a great thing, and I support it where I can. But couched in politics and apocalypic religion, there’ll be far more damage to people in the name of averting Global Warming than there would be even in actively warming the planet.

One more thing to consider, though: Every time we have a mild summer or a cold winter, we’re told by the Global Warming folks that “weather isn’t climate.” A hot summer, though? Oh, that’s climate.

You have missed to most important articles of the year. It is that geoengineering is causing the sun to be brighter and the hotter. It makes the sky look lighter blue and the sun look larger by diffusing it. This is caused by sulfates dumped in or atmosphere. Most people have noticed the sun is so hot on their skin they seek shade.

I agree with John that the sun feels hotter. There is a legitimate reason for it. The sun is being magnified by the chemicals being sprayed into the atmosphere (chemtrails) and if there truly is a warming of the globe we can thank H.A.A.R.P. and chemtrails.
If you’re not familiar with those two terms, a quick Google search will educate you real quick.

Nobody has ever offered a more succinct indictment of the global warming hoax than H. L. Mencken, who said: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Thousands of years ago, a primitive witch doctor told the members of his tribe that the drought (or the floods, or the storms) they were suffering from were a sign that their gods were unhappy with their sinful ways, and that their only hope of surviving was to do exactly as he said. Nothing much has changed since then. Climate alarmism is still a tool that dishonest men use in an effort to gain power over others, or to enrich themselves at their expense.

Daphne, I’m not saying that the climate isn’t changing. It changes all the time, as evidenced by last year’s announcement (contradicted this summer) that we were in a cooling trend. It’s also been warming in the ‘60s and ‘20s, and cooling in the ‘40s and ‘70s.

I dispute that (a) there’s a real correlation between our civilization’s footprint and the degree of warming, (b) the warming we see has destroyed equilibrium, and (c) the people pushing for “solutions” are any more interested in our future than the oil companies are.

As I said, if carbon dioxide is the culprit, we can solve the problem by growing plants and algae everywhere we can. There is no “point of no return,” except death, because plants scale with heat and carbon dioxide.

Instead, the alleged solution is to raise taxes and put that money toward…uhm…y’know…stuff, bigger banks, maybe. Or, if it’s an emergency, we’ll blanket the Earth in reflective dust so that we can starve to death and go broke trying to heat our homes.

When saving humanity involves sacrificing humans, I call BS, and this is the same Malthusian BS that’s been around for at least a hundred years, trying to convince the poor that they’re a blight on the planet.

When Congress puts solar panels on the roof and starts telecommuting, or when the National Guard starts planting trees, I’ll believe there’s a crisis. Until then, it’s either a scam or it’s out of our control.

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